Back of the Book — September 23, 2017

We're not sure if WBAI will be on this air this morning for our radio program. It wasn't on earlier in the morning, but then it did come on. Why is this happening? anyway, we'll try to cover the below topics and more on this program.

WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. We have to put archive blurb copy in before the program airs. The person in charge of the WBAI Web site says, “If you fail to create a playlist, your show may not show up in the archives at all.” So we made an archive blurb long before the program.

This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive To get to this program you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says “Display,” and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click “GO” and you'll see a list of programs, most of which are Back of the Book programs. Good luck.

The archive for the July 1, 2017, Back of the Book program never made it to the archives. All of the early Saturday morning programs that day did not get archived. So I have cobbled together an archive which I have posted here. For legal reasons the little music that was in the program had to be taken out, and mostly replaced with a short beep.

Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI there's no telling what's on in the alternate week's time slot anymore.

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Things have improved this year on the PNB. I'll be trying to update my pages about all of this in the near future.

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Bring Back Uncle Sidney!

Our friend, fellow WBAI producer and Saddle Pal Uncle Sidney Smith has been banned from WBAI by General Manager Berthold Reimers. The General Manager will not say why. He won't even tell Sidney why he's banned! This is grossly unfair to Sidney and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?

Lots of folks do it, and some say it's a great thing to do, others condemn diaristic writing. We'll cover what we can of this topic.

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Our Old refrigerator

We finally got our old refrigerator replaced this past fortnight. Here you can see the ancient thing after Pickles of the North took all of our extensive collection of refrigerator magnets, and just about anything else we have that'll stick to a piece of steel, off it for its final cleaning.

We are not at all sure of the age of our old refrigerator. It came into the apartment used, and, from the various features on it, it was from the '60s, or maybe even from the '50s. In addition, the interior light bulb was blown when we got it, and the light bulb couldn't be removed to be replaced. This old refrigerator came to us after the first refrigerator my male ex and I had failed. I think that was in the late '80s or the early '90s.

Pickles of the North put some adhesive shelf paper on the old fridge in the picture in order to cover up some of the gouges and deformities in it. I was able to live with such stuff, she has a more normal attitude toward manifestations of technological decrepitude.

The replacement refrigerator is much more modern, and it has a working light bulb in it. So far it looks to be a frost free type of refrigerator. Well, that will be a good change. We have had decades of having to defrost our ancient refrigerator.

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Autumn is here. Well, the Sun will set today at 6:51 PM (ET) in Brooklyn. The Middle third's wonderful sunsets that all took place after 7:00 PM (ET) are over for 2017. We won't see a sunset after 7:00 PM again until some time next March. Well, we'll have to hold out until then.

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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.

One open list is the WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. It is sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as “the bleepin' blue board,” owing to the blue background used on its Web pages. This one has many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary “WBAI people” board that's just totally out of hand. The bleepin' blue board had to add a step for folks to get onto it because it was under attack by spambots. When you click on the above link you may be asked for a username and password. Type in Username: poster Password: enternow

UPDATE: In of June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I'm the moderator on it now.

When the computer in Master Control is working we sometimes have live interaction with people posting on the “Goodlight Board” during the program.

One formerly popular mailing list is the “NewPacifica” mailing list. Founded October 31, 2000, this list has been moribund for a couple of years due to de facto censorship by the group owner. As of February 2017, it had 696 subscribers coast to coast, but postings on it are very infrequent now.

Back in the day it sometimes also got a bit nasty. All sorts of things used to happen on this list and official announcements were frequently posted there.

You can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too. If you subscribe to the “NewPacifica” mailing list you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list.

There is the option to receive a “digest” version of the list, which means that a bunch of messages are bundled into one E-mail and sent to you at regular intervals, this cuts down on the number of E-mails you get from the list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

This list also has a Web based interface where you can read messages and from which you can post your own messages.

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We like to stay interactive with our listeners. Here are the various options for you to get in touch with us.